No regrets

The enduring spirit of Springfields Tonguesnatcher Revue

Untitled Document
Back in the spring of
1977, I called my pal John Sluzalis in Springfield. I was in Denver and
wanted to know whether Sluzalis, a drummer, could play in a band that had
just lost its drummer. Made up of other musicians Sluzalis knew well, the
band had plenty of gigs booked out West. We would be returning to
Springfield to rehearse for two weeks and then hitting the road. Could he
do it? The band was the Tonguesnatcher Revue, a collection
of Springfield musicians who left their mark on the central Illinois music
scene in many ways. Next month, Sluzalis and several other Tonguesnatcher
alumni are reuniting for another project, in Taipei, Taiwan, of all places.
This time around, Sluzalis and I will be joining
former Tonguesnatcher lead singer Douglas Rapier for an appearance in
Taiwan at the fourth annual Blues Bash, held Nov. 17 and 18 and sponsored
by the Blues Society on Taiwan. The Blues Society on Taiwan, the mother organization
for blues on the island, grew out of a blues show Rapier presented on
Taiwan radio in 2004. When fans called to ask where they could hear the
blues, they learned that there were bands but no venues. Rapier had a mind
to change that. He applied to the Blues Foundation in Memphis, Tenn., so
that the Taiwan group would attain official affiliate status, then began to
spread the word. Fittingly, Rapier also spread the word with the music
itself. He formed a blues band and called it BoPoMoFo. Rapier explains:
“Just as the bo-po-mo-fo phonetic system acts as the ABCs for
Mandarin, the tonalities of the blues can be considered as
the basics of modern Western popular music, particularly rock,
R&B, and jazz.” Rapier had the idea of hosting a full-fledged live
blues concert in Taipei, both as a way to promote American music in Taiwan
and to give local blues bands an opportunity to network. If the bands
couldn’t go to the venue, then the venue would come to the bands. An international band of true blues enthusiasts was
formed, and, after a couple of personnel changes and various false starts,
Rapier began working in earnest with the current BoPoMoFo. The first Bash was held in March 2005; subsequent
Bashes have been held each November. Rapier’s efforts also led to
BoPoMoFo’s appearance at the 2007 International Blues Challenge, in
Memphis. Springfield was also ably represented at the Blues
Challenge by area blues artists sponsored by the Illinois Central Blues
Club. Local Springfield blues aficionados, joining performers from around
the world, have attended the event, held each year in Memphis at the end of
February. Larry Wagoner, once and future wheelman for Tonguesnatcher and
its associated incarnations, has kept in close contact with Rapier and has
been the driving force behind the reunion. In 2006, Wagoner made the trip to Taiwan with
Rapier’s brother Mike Rapier, a Springfield luthier and guitarist.
Shortly after that trip, Wagoner got in touch and coaxed me into making the
jaunt down to Memphis. The chance to visit with Rapier again, relive old
adventures, and catch up on our current musical lives was appealing. As an
added incentive, Rapier suggested that I sit in as saxophonist with
BoPoMoFo at Memphis’ legendary Sun Studios, where he had booked two
evenings of recording. One question we all asked in Memphis:
“Isn’t it about the music”? The answer and our subsequent
brainstorming put the wheels in motion for an international event that
would reunite a group of Springfield musicians who had not performed
together in many years. But before we get into that, let’s rewind a few
decades and fill in the backstory that led to this reunion. If it has a life, it can
be named. The Tonguesnatcher band name was lifted from a Rahsaan Roland
Kirk album in which Kirk told the story of a man with a tongue so long he
had to carry it in his hand, hence the moniker Mr. Tonguesnatcher. Rapier
and guitarist Rich Denhart, who first met as singer/songwriters in
Nashville, Tenn.,chose the name for a project with keyboardist Christy Bley, bass
player Dale Gable, and drummer Mick Kilgos. This early Tonguesnatcher played progressive rock and
had quite an interesting beginning. “We used to rehearse in a
smut theater near downtown Springfield after the last showing of
porn,” Rapier says. “That ill-fated attempt to form a
breathtaking, tongue-snatching band was an offshoot of a musical-theater
company/commune that lived in the Vancil Mansion for a few months that
staged a version of the rock opera Tommy at the Springfield Armory in 1970.” The band never made it past the initial stage of
development, but the name stuck. Rapier, Denhart, and Bley continued to work together
and began developing a project for Sangamon State University that evolved
into an acoustic vocal trio. “By that time, we were operating as a unit,
Christy, Doug and I,” Denhart recalls. “We were interested in a
solid vocal approach that veered from the traditional. We were also very
much interested in presenting a real event, a happening — sort of a
contemporary version of Wagner’s Gesamkunstwerk.”The vocal-trio idea met with positive feedback. “Encouraged by the response from the SSU folks,
we figured that we might have something to build on,” Rapier says.
“In the summer, we started to learn some new songs.” After
their prog-rock experiment, the trio had moved into quite a different
musical arena. The drummer Sluzalis had replaced in 1977 was no
slouch. Pat Greenan had been around the Springfield music scene since the
’60s and was coaxed into playing with Rapier and Denhart as
Tonguesnatcher’s drummer. Denhart had known Greenan for years, and
both had been active on the local band scene. Rapier and Denhart told
Greenan about their concept for a semiacoustic group featuring close vocal
harmonies and eschewing the normal commercial cover-band ethos.
Greenan agreed to give it a go. This is the incarnation of the Tonguesnatcher Revue
of which I became a part. It got started about the time Denhart and Bley
were near the end of their first year at Springfield College in
Illinois, in the spring of 1972. SSU was planning another concert event to
celebrate the solstice, and somebody there asked Denhart to provide
the music. Denhart approached Rapier about joining him. The
Tonguesnatcher thing seemed tailor-made for the event. Never one to leave well enough alone, Denhart also
thought that adding horns to the project would be a good idea. Denhart
was in school at SCI with Jay Fry, a trombone player who was studying
composition. Fry wrote the charts for a small horn section, and
Denhart asked him to find a trumpeter and a sax player to join the
band for that special summer event. The trumpeter’s name was Tom
Cartwright. Cartwright — now a bank executive — wore a rabbit
suit for the gig and smoked a giant cigar. I was the saxophone player. We were collectively dubbed the Magic Tongue Horns.
Rapier had even crafted red foam-rubber tongues to affix all the horns for
the show. We had a floor lamp, end tables, and a sofa to relax on while the
others did a tune or two without the horn section. We also had the mascot
Murdoch, a stuffed alligator that stood on its tail with light bulbs in
each hand. There were dancers, a professional whistler, and other
interactive events — even an applause-o-meter to gauge the
appreciation of the crowd. So this is what popular music was like, I
thought. I could get used to it. As a gigging musician in Springfield I was fairly
well connected with many of the musicians in town, especially players who
were left of center. I introduced the band to Virden hipster William B.
Hart, a kooky standup-bass player who fit the bill perfectly, replete with
bebop lingo, soul patch, and beret. Hart joined Greenan, and the rhythm
section was promptly christened the Waddlin’ Dog Rhythm Band. The
next incarnation of the Tonguesnatcher Revue was complete and ready to go.
The event at SSU was a smashing success — horn
section, hepcats and all. Media attention soon followed. The Tonguesnatcher
Revue found itself in need of an artistic advisor and lighting designer,
and, magically, Mike Getz and Larry Wagoner appeared. Hart became Bernard
Kazooty; I assumed the alias of Ben Binay Frith; and Bley, now the
band’s gimmick, transformed herself into Hootsie Smoots. Getz
provided practical business acumen, sound reinforcement, and contributed to
the band’s creative direction; Wagoner did the lighting, provided a
watchful eye, and collected obscure stage props for the band. Meanwhile,
Rapier, Denhart, and Greenan were playing their asses off. As early as 1972 the
Tonguesnatcher Revue began blending a wide variety of American popular
music into one big theatrical presentation. Tonguesnatcher setlists
juxtaposed Tin Pan Alley, blues, jazz, and rock, inspiring a giant creative
amalgam. The band glued together tunes from George Gershwin and the Beatles
with Zappa and Martin Mull or Hoagy Carmichael and Elvis Presley with
Motown hits. Many of the arrangements were nontraditional as well. Not one
for conforming to the musical grid, Tonguesnatcher didn’t merely copy
the original versions of tunes note-for-note but actually adapted the
flavor of the original song to suit their esoteric plans. The band was an experience in collage, visually as
well as sonically. For every show the stage was filled to overflowing with
stuffed animals and other props used in the interpretation of the tunes.
For a vintage “Ukulele Lady,” the band donned grass skirts,
coconut bras, and plenty of plastic leis; for “Under the
Boardwalk,” they wore black-and-red Spanish hats with little dingly
balls around the brim. By the summer of 1973 the Tonguesnatcher Revue had
taken on a life of its own. Rapier and Denhart, more adept at the business
end of the music business than the rest of us, scared up more gigs. Bley
used her superb ears to transcribe yet more repertoire into the
band’s unique style. Greenan’s exceptional musicianship
challenged us all to achieve a better collective sound. Tonguesnatcher was nothing if not adaptable. Hart
soon left the band for a career in the Navy, and the horn section shrank to
just one player. It remained for me to expand my duties to singing. In one
of the first rehearsals with the new leaner lineup, Bley began playing
keyboard bass, and Denhart stuck a mike in front of me and said,
“Sure you can sing. Go ahead and find a part that fits in!”
Tonguesnatcher’s initial goal of a band that relied on intricate
vocal arrangements while skirting the standard cover-band repertoire of the
mid-’70s was intact. The Tonguesnatcher Revue was supported by a vast
assembly of enthusiastic fans. In the summer of 1974 we began playing
regularly at Tino’s Hideaway. Tonguesnatcher had become the resident
musical experience at the club — located at 2955 N. Jefferson St.,
now the site of a hair salon. It was at Tino’s that we refined our
setlists and built a faithful following. It was there that we also learned to drink ouzo. The
club was owned by a Greek businessman who took a shine to the swarthy Getz,
and at the end of the night the Greek regularly attempted to cloud our
fiduciary sense with shots of the licorice-flavored jet fuel, all
good-naturedly, of course: “Drink! Yassou! You my boys! I make money, you make money! You my boys!” “What about her?” someone asked,
referring to Christy. “She my boys, too!”The members of
Tonguesnatcher were looking to expand the band’s horizons.
Wanting to capitalize on somewhat familiar territory, Rapier and
Denhart packed up our demo tapes and persuaded Bley to make the journey, in
her road-weary Citroën, to Nashville. A booking agent there made the
trip up past the Mason-Dixon Line to see the band live at Tino’s.
True to form, the band had papered the house with fans to impress the
agent. It must have worked. Tony Moon, of Crescent Moon Talent in
Nashville, offered the band a series of gigs throughout the South. Moon brought some amount of credibility with him. His
participation in Dante and the Evergreens in the early ’60s had
planted him firmly in the music business; Moon was part of the other band that made the
single “Alley Oop” a hit. But the savvy Rapier and Denhart were
well versed in the rough-and-tumble world of Music City business. We
trusted their business sense and our musical acumen and reached an
agreement with Moon, then packed our gear and headed for the Southland. In Nashville the band changed its image and began to
capitalize on its flashier aspects. At Moon’s suggestion, the boys in
the band cut their hair. Following the inspiration led by the
gangster-themed Sweetheart (also a Crescent Moon talent and a band that
would figure prominently in Tonguesnatcher’s future), we began
collecting and wearing vintage clothes. In one sweltering Southern summer,
Tonguesnatcher went from thrift-store chic to vintage cool. Our musical
style was changing as well — but, as Frank Zappa said, “No
change in musical style will survive unless it’s accompanied by a
change in clothing. Rock is to dress up to.”Dress up we did. We had plenty of opportunity to
polish our stage show and our brogans and even had time to network with
other acts. One gig where we could flaunt our eclectic talents was with
Darryl Starbird’s Rod & Custom Car Show. In what became known as
the “Car Show Tour,” our gigs took us from Nashville to
Wichita, Albuquerque, El Paso, and Oakland. Living with a band on the road is like being married
without the sex. You get to know your bandmates intimately — their
likes, their dislikes, and even their eating habits. One band member would
not eat anything wet. “I want a cheeseburger — just the meat,
the cheese, and the bun,” he’d say. “No lettuce, no
pickles, no tomatoes, no mustard, no ketchup, no mayo . . . nothing but the
meat, the cheese, and the bun.” We all knew the litany by heart. Invariably, though,
a burger would arrive at the table with pickles, lettuce, and tomato on the
side. The meal was ruined just by the proximity of these wet fixings next
to the sandwich. This circumstance was a drag for that band member but a
boon to the rest of us, who lived off the leavings. Humor was always part of
the band’s shtick, and our timing and jokes were refined during the
Car Show Tour. During a 10-day gig at the Oakland Coliseum we shared the
stage with Burt Ward, TV’s Robin and sidekick to Adam West.
Naturally, the stage banter was rife with underwear jokes, many supplied by
Ward. He took pleasure in heckling the band from stage left. We appeared
with two different Playboy Bunnies at each car-show gig. We also shared the
trip with two fans who had signed on to drive a car from Chicago to Los
Angeles — by way of Wichita, Albuquerque, El Paso, and the Bay Area
— popping up at every Tonguesnatcher gig along the way. The Car Show Tour was a small bright spot in a long
string of unfortunate gigs booked through Crescent Moon Talent. Many of our
dates down South were busts and a few were even scary, but the band’s
relationship with Crescent Moon began to wane when the agency sent us on a
cross-country trip from Oakland, our last stop on the Car Show Tour, to a
Holiday Inn gig somewhere near Rochester, N.Y. We drove into a blinding
snowstorm, and when we arrived in New York the hotel manager blamed us for
the meager turnout at the cocktail lounge — never mind that there was
snow and ice several feet deep outside. We were fired after the first night
but refused to leave our rooms, and the sheriff was called in to evict us.
We ended up stranded far from home with no gig and no paycheck, conspiring
to behead a hotel manager. The band eventually made it back to Nashville, where
we cornered the agent in the parking lot of a local club and proceeded to
vent our frustrations. The adventures were just beginning for the
Tonguesnatcher Revue. Always interested in the “experience,”
the band and its creative contingent began organizing another event,
another “happening.” What could make a better happening than
running for president of the United States in the bicentennial year? Try as
we might, Tonguesnatcher band members can’t forget our bid for the
White House in 1976. The promotion was enhanced by one of our most
interesting band photos ever. Photographer Steve Morse shot the band from a
distance, all of us waving from a balcony fully decorated in red, white,
and blue bunting. In the promo photo the band is seen through the
crosshairs of a high-powered rifle. Black humor had always been our stock
in trade. Our nominating convention, held at a Springfield
Knights of Columbus hall, drew hundreds of supporters. True to form, we
were all dispatched midset by a mock assassination carried out by a writer
and friend from the Illinois State Journal. Not having rehearsed the bit, the entire band fell to the
floor at the sound of the first “gunshot.”At the very least, the Journal has been efficient in dealing with local talent. But we needed to work.
In search of gigs, the band once again began making forays into other
markets. On one trip to Denver, Rapier’s connections landed the band
a gig at a venue called The Broadway. We had very little information about
the place and weren’t told until we had passed Kansas City that the
Broadway was a gay bar. Naturally the band fit right in.
Tonguesnatcher’s over-the-top stage show, the take-no-prisoners
presentation of eclectic music delivered with panache, was a good starter.
The band had always relied on audience interaction to make each gig an
event rather than a passive stage show. At The Broadway, the band won over
another audience. It was duringthe first trip to Denver that the strain of constant travel
began to take its toll. Pat Greenan decided to call it quits after our
initial gig in Denver. Once again the band returned to Springfield to rest
and regroup. We had gigs booked, and we needed a full band to play them.
After all, the show must go on. Enter here John Sluzalis. Sluzalis took
over the drum throne from Greenan and learned the parts, arrangements, and
most of the shtick in two short weeks of intensive rehearsals. In Springfield, Jim Troxell, another friend and
excellent musician, had just graduated from Springfield High School.
Tonguesnatcher was on its way out of town, back to Denver for work, and the
thought occurred to someone that a roadie/tech-support person might be nice
to have. Eighteen-year-old Jim volunteered and left a note on his kitchen
table: “Mom, I’m going on the road with the Tonguesnatcher
Revue.” At that moment, our good friend Tooter was born. With a full crew, Tonguesnatcher arrived in Denver in
the early part of 1977 for another gig at The Broadway. The Tonguesnatcher Revue
returned to Denver for several more extended engagements and enjoyed
positive press coverage in that town. It was in Denver’s aptly named
Satire Lounge, over plates of tamales, that we shaped the setlist into an
esoteric collection of Beatles, Beach Boys, Frank Zappa, Van Morrison, Dan
Hicks, jug-band tunes, and an eclectic string of R&B, soul, and radio
hits. Tonguesnatcher had become an emblematic band associated with music
that moved the soul more than it did the pocketbook. Throughout the
’70s Tonguesnatcher disdained disco’s monotony and the hair
bands’ hyperbole. It was here that the band’s eccentric
combination caught the attention of Meadowlark Productions’ Chris
Roberts, a booking agent based in Missoula, Mont.The success of the Broadway gigs and collaboration
with another agent led to other dates in the Mountain West. One such gig
involved appearing as the house band at the Silver Slipper in Central City,
Colo. There we shared sets with Swami Amazo and the Circus of Earthly
Delights. Swami swallowed swords and threw playing cards into watermelons.
His wife, the beautiful Sascha, walked on broken glass and did strongwoman
stunts that embarrassed many a man in the audience. It was a strange
presentation of the variety arts at 8,500 feet, and it was another perfect
fit. At the Silver Slipper, the band alternated hour-long
sets with the Swami and his Circus starting at 11 a.m., six days a week,
for the entire summer. Our last show ended each day at 7 p.m. The tough
schedule helped us hone our show and sharpen our wit while building our
endurance. We were also again officially “on the road,” even if
the road was coming to us in the steady stream of tourists filing through
the Silver Slipper. We were living four to a room at the Bugs Bunny Motel
in Lakewood, Colo., and after each grueling day we arrived at the motel
exhausted but happy to be working. An agent told us at some
showcase that the band would be perfect — perfect — if we had a
“killer” guitar player. Denhart, who was already a fine
guitarist, switched to bass and Tad Bley, Christy’s brother, took up
lead guitar duties. We were now six onstage: Denhart on bass, Sluzalis on
drums, Christy Bley on keyboards, and Tad Bley on guitar, with Doug and I
fronting the lineup, both of us playing sax and flute and carrying a big
shtick. We had a crew of three: Tooter, Wagoner, and the semiprofessional
soundman John Peters (a.k.a. Pooters), whose battered Borsalino drew nasty
looks in every truck stop from New Mexico to Montana. Thanks to Chris Roberts, the band began making
regular tours of ski resorts along the Rocky Mountains. Those gigs gave us
a chance to play fewer one-nighters and allowed us to develop our show. It
also presented some logistical challenges. At one point we had built
ourselves a trailer to carry our gear, a huge orange beast that was barely
kept under control by the pickup truck pulling it. In Glacier, Mont., on the northern edge of our loop
around the Rockies, the transmission went out on the pickup as it towed the
overloaded trailer. The entire band and crew were stranded in the middle of
nowhere on a Labor Day weekend with no means of escape. Not a business was
open except one gas station and the diner across the street. We could do
nothing but wait while the truck was repaired. It seemed as if David Lynch was directing this leg of
the tour. “The Native Americans at the gas station agreed to try fix
the transmission, which, to our surprise and delight, included sitting in a
circle and chanting over the wounded parts,” Dehart recalls.
“We were willing to try anything, and so were our mechanics.”
The medicine worked. We gathered our transcultural karmic rewards and
limped back to Springfield to ditch the trailer. Tonguesnatcher’s time out West gave us the
impetus to further sharpen our show, but by this time money worries were
starting to accumulate, and we also flirted with personal meltdowns. Tours
of ski resorts in the Rocky Mountains, scenic as they were, were not enough
to give the band what it needed. Debt and burnout eventually contributed to
the breakup of our partnership. But it would take more than a band breakup to drive a
stake into the heart of this beast. While in Nashville in
1974 and ’75, the Tonguesnatcher Revue had cultivated a relationship
with the band Sweetheart, which also had Crescent Moon Talent as an agent.
Adrian Belew was brought in as a hired gun for Sweetheart, filling the
“killer guitarist” slot. The members of the two bands would
commiserate about our shared dislike of Crescent Moon Talent, swap road
stories, and trade information about vintage-clothing stores whenever our
schedules would allow. We became partners in misery. It was at a Sweetheart
gig in Nashville that Frank Zappa stumbled onto Belew and his creativity on
the guitar. Things changed when we left Crescent Moon Talent.
Belew moved on from Sweetheart and took a gig with a local Nashville star,
but he was miserable. Talking about his gigging experience at the time,
Belew tells of hearing a long, low drone emerging during one extended jam.
He looked over to see the star of the show, his head flopped onto the organ
keys, passed out. Shortly thereafter, Zappa called. Belew auditioned, was
hired, and joined a world tour. After the Tonguesnatcher breakup, Denhart and Christy
Bley returned to Springfield. Despite our difficulties, the Tonguesnatcher
folks always managed to return to the Springfield area to regroup. The
question on Denhart’s mind was “What now?” The prospect
of starting or even joining another band was overwhelming. Denhart says,
“Playing in a band requires so much energy, both physically and
emotionally. I wasn’t ready to jump back into that just yet. What I
did have a passion for was the recording studio. We just decided to go for
it.” Denhart and Bley began to look for the proper
building. They found an abandoned potato warehouse on Springfield’s
North End and began the work of remodeling the interior. Denhart designed
the control room and put his carpentry skills to use. Then came the task of
wiring the place, which took a month. Several more months were spent
finishing the interior. Denhart started learning how to use the recording
equipment they had purchased. Denhart says, “Cwazy Wabbit [Studios]
was the continuation of my university training.” It was at around this
time that Denhart and Bley traveled to Chicago to visit Belew, who was now
playing with David Bowie. Belew lamented that he had no friends left in
Nashville. Almost as a joke, Denhart suggested that Belew check out
Springfield, a friendly town where the rents were cheap. Belew was so eager
for a change that his wife made arrangements to stop by the capital city.
Shortly after visiting, Belew’s family made the move. When the Bowie
tour ended, Belew settled in Springfield and began work on his own music at
Cwazy Wabbit. I had relocated to Springfield from Boulder around
the same time and began talking to Denhart and Belew about the music they
were making. Springfield had always been home base for the Tonguesnatcher
Revue. Now Springfield was world headquarters for our next phase of
creative partnership. Much like the inception of the Tonguesnatcher Revue,
the band GaGa had humble beginnings. We were living our art, ensconced at
Cwazy Wabbit. We camped in the studio for days at a time whenever
inspiration, or sheer necessity, called for it. Belew’s famous
“rhino” guitar sound was discovered at Cwazy Wabbit during a
late-night session. Arduous multitracked sax experiments evolved into the
horn parts for such memorable Belew works as “Swingline” and
“Adidas in Heat.” Denhart also had the opportunity to record
just about every band in Springfield at Cwazy Wabbit in the late ’70s
and early ’80s. Cwazy Wabbit closed its doors while GaGa played
one-night dates around the Midwest. We had begun testing the waters with
Belew’s original music in a live setting. Clif Mayhugh, a fine
Cincinnati bassist, joined GaGa, our touring endeavors, and our wacky life
in Springfield. GaGa saw the inside of nearly every rock club in central
Illinois. We also opened for such bands as the Pretenders and Jefferson
Starship and landed an extended set of dates with Robert Fripp’s
League of Gentlemen, touring the East Coast. GaGa worked long and hard to bring Belew’s
bubbly songwriting and ferocious guitar work to a receptive audience. While
the band was out playing, Belew’s manager, Stan Hertzman, was
shopping the Cwazy Wabbit tapes. After a year of knocking on doors,
Hertzman finally hit pay dirt. We were all thrilled when Belew signed with
Island Records in 1981. The band was rewarded with a trip to the Bahamas
and Compass Point Studios to record Adrian’s first solo record, The Lone Rhino. After a couple of months of sun, surf, and sounds, we
returned to Springfield, ready to perform. Recording The Lone Rhino was a creative
shot in the arm for us all, especially Belew. Folks in central Illinois may
remember some of the early GaGa shows, featuring a drummer on tape,
suggested by pal Fripp. The taped drummer, fantastic musicianship, and
sheer fun of it all brought a bit of Tonguesnatcher zaniness into all
aspects of our lives in Springfield. Those who attended the Sunday
afternoon volleyball games at Cwazy Wabbit were lucky enough to get a taste
of that inventiveness first hand. The Lone Rhino gave
Belew and the band a much wider audience. Through his connections we struck
up a friendship with the New York band the Talking Heads and attended a
bunch of their concerts across the Midwest and East. The Talking Heads
reciprocated by attending our East Coast shows when we opened for Fripp.
Eventually the Heads invited Belew to record on their next album. Before leaving town we schlepped Belew’s gear
up several flights of stairs and sat in the control room as he laid down
some searing guitar tracks for the Talking Heads album Remain in Light. In just a couple of
passes, Belew recorded tracks that would stand out among the
cliché-ridden guitar music of the mid-’80s. Demand for Belew grew and, purely out of necessity,
GaGa disbanded. The band played a few live dates when Belew’s
schedule allowed, but we also needed to support ourselves while he was
away, and for economic reasons we gravitated to Champaign-Urbana’s
lively music scene. In 1982 and ’83 we contributed heavily, along
with the legendary Larrie Londin on drums and Clif Mayhugh on bass, to
Belew’s sophomore solo recording, Twang
Bar King. The Tonguesnatcher spirit was reflected in
Belew’s approach to the Twang Bar King album and tour. Getz, the artistic advisor from
Tonguesnatcher’s inception, did the album artwork for Twang Bar King and
created the tour shirts, designed stage sets, and custom-painted
Belew’s guitars. My wife, Carolyne, designed and made the
color-coordinated stage clothes. The creative partnership that had begun 10
years earlier lasted through the final date of Belew’s Twang Bar Tour
in 1983, but then we all went our separate ways. A vestigial Tonguesnatcher — Rapier, Denhart,
and me — did attempt a reunion, in the summer of 1985. We sang
together for an afternoon, but without Christy Bley’s honeyed voice
and keyboard talent, the Tonguesnatcher Revue was incomplete, and the
project was abandoned. The question most asked
of addicts is “Why don’t you just quit?” The answer:
Because we can’t. Denhart and I continued to work in the music
business, basing ourselves in Champaign-Urbana. Denhart developed his
engineering and production skills working with Belew and on other projects,
and he eventually landed a gig with Narada Records as an executive
producer. I delighted in showcasing my playing and composing skills in my
own group, Loud Shirts, a contemporary acoustic chamber trio. I continued
to work on projects by Belew, the Bears, the California Guitar Trio, Robert
Fripp, and others. Rapier, in the meantime, had moved to Taiwan and
begun teaching English. Bley took to the road again to follow her muse.
Greenan moved to Madison, Wis., to teach drums. Tad Bley is rumored to have
gotten a doctorate in chiropractic, and Bruce Hart has retired from the
Navy and returned to Springfield. Jim Troxell made it back to Springfield and continues
musically as a superb bassist. The nickname he earned in those first few
days with the Tonguesnatcher Revue would live on in his own band, A Flock
of Tooters. In the ’90s Jim and I had the pleasure of working with
former Tonguesnatcher drummer Pat Greenan in one of the best improvising
bands I’ve ever been in, Food and Money, with vocalist David Adams
and guitarist John Novak. Novak would later join Dean Jensen and me in our
Loud Shirts project. After Tonguesnatcher, Sluzalis joined the Ice Capades
aspercussionist.
When the ice melted, he too, returned to Springfield, adding his talents to
the bands Cats on Holiday, the Merchant Street Rowdies, and several of his
own projects. Tonguesnatcher alums continue to experience unique
musical adventures, and the muse is indeed still alive. The spirit of the
Tonguesnatcher Revue also lives on in the Blues Bash on Taiwan. In Taiwan, Rapier, Sluzalis, and I will a chance to
catch up on our past musical lives. If 50 is the new 40 (and I really hope it is), then
maybe the Tonguesnatcher attitude will be around for another decade or so.
Regardless of where the band traveled, Springfield and central Illinois
have remained the inspiration for the band’s craftsmanship. As Sluzalis says, “I’ve played all over
the world — Japan, Montreux, and everywhere in between. Springfield
audiences are some of the best. They’re knowledgeable, enthusiastic,
and really support good music.”We’re hoping that the people of Taiwan are just
as hip. Bill Janssen was born in Springfield, graduated from
Griffin High School in 1970, and majored in music at Springfield College.
He works for the city of Denver and is completing his long-delayed
undergraduate history degree at the University of Colorado.